Ark of the Covenant

The ark of the covenant was, according to the Hebrew Bible (Oxford Bibliographies article in Biblical Studies “Biblical Canon”), a portable wooden chest that occupied a central position in ancient Israelite worship. The various biblical passages pertaining to the ark indicate that it was thought by their authors to contain the documentation of a covenant (Oxford Bibliographies article in Biblical Studies “Covenant”) between the Israelites and their Deity yhwh (Oxford Bibliographies article in Biblical Studies “God, Ancient Israel”), to mark that Deity’s presence, and to have been located in the holiest part of the wilderness tabernacle (Oxford Bibliographies article in Biblical Studies “Temples and Sanctuaries”) and later of Solomon’s temple (Oxford Bibliographies article in Biblical Studies “Temples and Sanctuaries”) in Jerusalem.